This is a social community inspired by the Wheel of Time. Talk about anything, connect with people and interests across the open social web, and swear your body and soul to the Great Lord of the Dark.

First of all, welcome

This is a social community inspired by the Wheel of Time. Talk about anything, connect with people and interests across the open social web, and swear your body and soul to the Great Lord of the Dark.

Open social web, what does that mean?

Mastodon is one of a few platforms that support the fediverse, the concept of inter-connected social media applications and servers. So while we may choose to find a home on a relatively small fandom-themed server, we can still engage with people and posts from the larger servers.

How do I find people?

Once you have an account, you will be able to see activity that takes place here on this server using the Local timeline. You can find and engage with anybody local that way.

There is also the Federated timeline, which shows posts from people on other servers. As we engage with people from other servers, those peoples' content will also start surfacing in our Federated timeline and in Search. If you see something in the Federated timeline, you can also engage with it there the same way as you would if it were local.

If you really want to branch out, you can often view the public timelines of some of the larger servers. This allows you to explore the discussions taking place there, and potentially find new and interesting people to follow and engage with. They will just give you a URL for you to enter into search here so that you can engage with the content from your home server.

There are also browser plugins and mobile apps which make it easier to engage with content from other servers. Roam with Mastodon is a browser extension we recommend for this purpose. Find other servers here

Always feel free to ask

Testing new technologies and new platforms can be a lot of fun. It can also be frustrating and confusing at times. Please always feel free to ask questions if you're confused about something or don't know how to do something that you think you should be able to do. For those new to Mastodon, I put together a short thread demonstrating some of what Mastodon posts look like and can do. This is not a comprehensive tutorial, and questions are always welcome.

How is this funded?

Darkfriend Social is paid for by our generous users and the server admin. Donating through Ko-Fi or PayPal using the links below will help to pay the monthly hosting costs. See the Ko-Fi page for a description of costs and current funding goal.

 

Updates for the Darkfriend Social community, server, and funding will be posted to our blog at blog.darkfriend.social. This blog is also federated, which means that you can follow @updates@blog.darkfriend.social.

Wheel of Time chapter icons have been downloaded from http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Chapter_art, and are under the same license.

Code of Conduct

Moderation Team

Our moderation team members are:

• @hybridhavoc

If you would like to volunteer to join the moderation team, email hybridhavoc@darkfriend.social with some details on what motivated you to volunteer and how you view the role of content moderaters. We may not always be looking to expand the moderation team.

Reporting

If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the moderators. They'll respond as promptly as they can. Utilize the report function or email abuse@darkfriend.social.

We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.

Consequences

Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the moderators may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from this community and identifying the participant publicly as someone about whom we've received complaints.

Harassment

Harassment includes:

• Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion
• Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
• Deliberate misgendering or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names
• Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behavior in spaces where they’re not appropriate
• Simulated physical contact (e.g. textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop.
• Threats of violence
• Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm
• Deliberate intimidation
• Sustained disruption of discussion
• Unwelcome sexual attention
• Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
• Publication of non-harassing private communication

Advertisements and Promotions

Advertisements are considered to be any promotion of products or services for sale, either for money or other form of barter, that are not directly related to the primary topic of this community (The Wheel of Time) or to an ongoing discussion.

Exceptions include merchandise products or other services that:

• are officially licensed Wheel of Time properties
• are from or related to Wheel of Time fan creators
• otherwise are freely available to all

Rules against advertising pertain to local accounts only. If you encounter unwanted advertising in your own feed or in the federated feed, please unfollow and/or block the account as needed.

Moderation Guide

joyeusenoelle on Github was kind enough to put together a Guide to Mastodon Moderation which outlines the tools available to Mastodon moderators. This is good reading for anybody that is or wants to be a moderator of a Mastodon community.

• Local accounts that violate Rule 1 will be Suspended.
• Repeat offenders of Rules 2 - 5 may have their posts force-marked sensitive, their accounts Limited, and/or Suspended.
• Local accounts that violate Rules 6 or 7 may have their accounts Limited and/or Suspended.

Federation

We utilize the tier 0 server blocklist from Oliphant and the Fedi Council. In addition, we subscribe to the #FediBlock hashtag and investigate reported servers. If evidence of content that would violate our rules is readily available either on the server's public timeline, on the server admin's personal timeline, or there are additional details that we feel warrant action, the server is moderated accordingly.

• Servers that host a number repeat offenders of Rule 2 may be Limited.
• Servers that host a number of repeat offenders of Rule 3 may be Suspended.
• Servers that host a number of repeat offenders of Rule 4 may be Limited and/or have their media files rejected.
• Servers that host a number of repeat offenders of Rule 5 may be Limited and/or Suspended.
• Servers that are the source of spam waves may be Limited. Spam is determined at the discretion of the moderation team.

Moderated server obfuscation

In the list(s) of moderated servers, we choose to obfuscate server names when their names themselves are deemed hateful or objectionable. If you would like to know the full server name for any of the obfuscated servers below, please contact an admin or moderator.

Credits and License

This code of conduct is based on Annalee Flower Horne's Sample Slack Code of Conduct, which is in turn based on Geek Feminism's Community Anti-Harassment Policy. We have adapted the Sample Slack Code of Conduct for our own use under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.

1. You must be 13 years of age or older to hold an account on Darkfriend Social.
2. Show respect. Treat others with kindness, respect, dignity, and patience.
3. Do not harass others. Read the Code of Conduct for a description of what we consider to be harassment.
4. Do not post or boost NSFW content without Content Warnings / Sensitive Content setting.
5. Do not post or boost illegal material. This includes copyrighted materials which you are not licensed to share.
6. Do not post advertisements or promotions. Read the Code of Conduct for a description of what we consider to be advertisements.
7. Hide spoilers and leaks behind Content Warnings.